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Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–14.Back to highlights
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Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
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A Red Cross-funded summer institute trains social workers at the University
Before he left Emory, Howard Odum persuaded the American Red Cross to pay the summer faculty of a training institute on campus for social workers, teachers, nurses, ministers, probation officers and Red Cross, YMCA and YWCA staff. Chase let a woman instructor assist but not lead a course.
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Howard W. Odum comes to Chapel Hill to lead UNC's School of Public Welfare and sociology department
Odum, a Georgia-born sociologist who had been dean of liberal arts at Emory, arrived in Chapel Hill in 1920 to direct the School of Public Welfare and the Department of Sociology. He taught at UNC for the rest of his life.
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Howard W. Odum founds the Journal of Social Forces at UNC
Two years after coming to UNC, Odum founded and edited the Journal of Social Forces, the journal now titled Social Forces.
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Odum's new institute makes county government its first study
The Institute for Research in Social Science chose county government as its first project, with E. C. Branson leading researchers who examined forty-three counties. Odum shared the findings in 1925 with Governor McLean's study commission, and McLean put county finance reforms to the 1927 legislature.
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Odum's Institute for Research in Social Science is organized at UNC
The Institute for Research in Social Science was organized at Chapel Hill on June 30, 1924, for the cooperative study of social problems arising from state and regional conditions. Odum founded it with help from the Rockefeller Fund, and it is now the Odum Institute.
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Chase has an institute researcher's study of Winston-Salem Black businesses destroyed
Robinson E. Newcomb, a Brookings graduate student working with the Institute for Research in Social Science, had pieced together Black wage data from pay stubs outside R. J. Reynolds plants. After trustee James A. Gray Jr., a Reynolds vice president, complained, Chase and Odum gathered every copy, and Chase assured Gray he had seen to the destruction of the draft and notes. One copy survived at Brookings.
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James Weldon Johnson speaks at the YMCA's Institute of Human Relations
Harry F. Comer's weeklong institute, approved by Chase, brought speakers on race, labor and world affairs. Johnson, NAACP executive secretary, spoke in Memorial Hall and met classes. History chair J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton walked out when Howard Odum introduced him as 'Mister Johnson' and protested to Chase, while a Tar Heel editorial by David Donald Carroll welcomed the visit.
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Rupert B. Vance joins the UNC sociology faculty and the Institute for Research in Social Science
After taking his doctorate at UNC in 1928, Vance was appointed to the staff of Howard W. Odum's Institute for Research in Social Science and the Department of Sociology. He was named Kenan Professor in 1945.
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Chase's memorandum warns faculty against advocacy that embarrasses the university
Under attack from textile editor David Clark, Chase sent Howard Odum, Dudley D. Carroll and Frank Graham a discussion memo on proper activities for social scientists. Faculty whose causes involved colleagues in general embarrassment should leave, he wrote; in North Carolina such causes included certain taxes, labor organizing, racial equality and socialism.
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Odum's institute wins a $240,000 Rockefeller grant
The Institute for Research in Social Science secured $240,000 from a Rockefeller foundation for studies of social and child welfare, crime and justice, taxation, industry and cooperatives.
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The Rockefeller Foundation grants Odum's Institute for Research in Social Science $30,000 a year
The foundation announced a yearly grant of $30,000 to support the work of the university's Institute for Research in Social Science under Howard Odum. Covington says the announcement came the same day Coates held his first conference of public officials.
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UNC names W. C. Jackson dean of a new School of Public Administration
Graham and Odum announced Jackson, history chair at the Woman's College in Greensboro, as dean of the school Odum had planned for three years with a small state allocation. Graham urged Coates to fold the Institute into it and made him one of its trustees, but Coates kept apart; short of state money, the school was dissolved after Jackson returned to Greensboro as chancellor.
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UNC Press publishes Odum's Southern Regions of the United States
The University of North Carolina Press in Chapel Hill published Odum's Southern Regions of the United States, a 664-page study of social conditions across the South prepared for the Social Science Research Council's Southern Regional Committee.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Howard W. Odum dies in Chapel Hill
Odum died in Chapel Hill on November 8, 1954, while still at work on several books, after 34 years on the UNC faculty.
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